


Fixed Verse

by cognomen



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Banter, Character Study, Established Relationship, Kissing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 17:29:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8903053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: The place the Force lives is the deepest silence in Chirrut’s soul. In the pursuit of it, he used to seek quiet places. His order taught silence and meditation, to listen only to the quiet world around them - and inside the halls of the Kyber temple they had cultivated quiet. 

  He feels closer to the Force in the noise than he ever had in silence. He can hear all of the city below them as they follow the wall; steps up and down every few feet. Criers and sellers, and just the sheer bustle. Hushed conversations and shouted arguments. Here, the Force exists in the pauses between steps, the tiny lapses in conversation, the moments between Baze’s heavy breaths behind him.
A character study as I find my feet, pre-movie, maybe some spoilers.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MayGlenn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayGlenn/gifts).



The place the Force lives is the deepest silence in Chirrut’s soul. In the pursuit of it, he used to seek quiet places. His order taught silence and meditation, to listen only to the quiet world around them - and inside the halls of the Kyber temple they had cultivated quiet. 

He feels closer to the Force in the noise than he ever had in silence. He can hear all of the city below them as they follow the wall; steps up and down every few feet. Criers and sellers, and just the sheer bustle. Hushed conversations and shouted arguments. Here, the Force exists in the pauses between steps, the tiny lapses in conversation, the moments between Baze’s heavy breaths behind him.

“You used to take these steps easily,” Chirrut goads, increasing his pace in small increments and waiting to see if his friend will protest. There are two hundred and nineteen stairs, a number that has become holy in Chirrut’s mind since the Empire had thrown them out of the temple. 

“We _both_ used to be younger men,” Baze mutters. “Besides, I’m still keeping up.”

There is a clatter of readjusted armor, as Baze re-shoulders his gun. He didn’t used to carry that, either. Chirrut begins to pick up his pace again, and Baze’s hand lands on his arm, curling around his bicep, restraining. 

“Not an invitation,” Baze rumbled. Chirrut paused; step 106 - halfway there, or almost. There’s a view here, he’s been told. He can hear it, some of it. Or he could, when Jedha was still beautiful and people still came for reasons other than to strip it bare and leave it shuddering and empty.

Overhead he can hear the Imperial transports; it’s a constant stream now - in and out. There are wookies somewhere, wailing, mining. He can’t hear the clatter of picks or breaking stone but he can almost feel it.

He sets the end of his staff against the stair below him and feels the way the city moves. 

“Why don’t we get out of here?” Baze asks, still catching his breath. His voice is rough; he doesn’t like the Empire and he doesn’t like looking at their ships hollowing out the temple and carrying off the remains like carrion birds.

“This is where the Force says-”

Baze sighs out, exasperated. Tolerant. He moves to take Chirrut’s shoulder again, and Chirrut feels it coming so acutely that he almost can’t discern the second of contact, the big, broad palm folding over the apex of his shoulder, fingers pressing down in the weak place beneath his collar bone, thumb over the blade of his shoulder.

“Good Sense and the Force are having a lot of arguments, these days,” Baze says.

“Well,” Chirrut turned; he could pinpoint the sound of his friend’s voice. “I’d rather have bad sense-”

“You do.”

“Than no senses at all,” Chirrut continues, amused. “The argument will be sorted. I don’t think we’re going to stay here forever.”

“There’s nothing to stay for.”

“There is,” Chirrut disagrees, sliding his staff until he felt the lip of the next stair and stepping up onto it. He began their motion again. 

Baze, used to cryptic answers and avoidance, only leaves a pause for Chirrut to finish.

“The right moment.”

They wait for it until even Chirrut’s patience has stretched thin and wan; the translucent film they wrap over food to keep it from spoiling, enough to stop that force, but the impact of a finger will penetrate. He has begun to feel the finger-holes forming in his faith, stretching and spreading.

Then, as always, it’s Baze who becomes patient. He is the counterbalance of the Force, the heavy weight that keeps it steady when it seems all but nonexistent. 

“Don’t get into a fight,” Baze warns wearily, as Chirrut waits in the ruins of an old wall; once this had been a bustling bakery along the main thoroughfare. It is not a casualty of the empire - the Rebellion here had overshot. The baker survived, but he’d fled the city - the planet, Chirrut thinks. All that’s left of the bread - which had called Chirrut in a thousand times to eat when he was younger - is the old baking-smell soaked into the stones, trying not to drown under burnt-charge-munitions. 

If he puts his back against the stones he can almost remember the taste of the warm, fresh bread - thick and heavy. A rough, round loaf in his hands, a crust under his fingers that felt solid but broke under quick work with his pocket knife and revealed spongy softness inside.

“Who is there to fight?” Chirrut asks, rhetorically. 

“You look like fighting,” Baze tells him. He hasn’t moved in a little while. Chirrut can hear that he’s near - he’s never far - and knows from experience that he’s sitting with the heavy gun in his lap, in a position of advantage. 

“I wouldn’t know.” Chirrut can’t help his smile - he feels it, has always found it funny that the instinct is there despite the fact he’s never seen one. He has felt Baze’s form under his fingertips, revealing round teeth and sharp ones, the way his mouth cut a line in his beard and moved it. 

“Now you look like something else,” Baze tells him, voice sliding over from tension to amusement.

“I feel like something else,” Chirrut agrees, but there is an inertia holding him to place, something pulling his attention to listen. Somewhere, a broadcast has begun. The usual Imperial propaganda-

_If you see this pilot, your duty to the Empire is to inform-_

“A defector,” Baze says, sensing the shift in Chirrut’s attention - they are attuned to each other that way. “They want information on him. He must have something important.”

“Have you seen him?” Chirrut asks.

“If I have, I wasn’t paying attention,” Baze answers.

There’s the failure of sight. Always open, like a door. It didn’t close to admit only specifics in. This, Chirrut holds onto. It’s interesting; an outlying fact. He thinks the Force has put it in his way, and rather than tripping over it he must consider the dimensions and angle of it before he steps up onto it. 

“Well, if he’s here, it’s more likely Saw has him,” Baze continues. “There won’t be much of him left.”

Chirrut neither agrees nor disagrees. The message begins to repeat, broadcast on the official channel - the only one that remains in Jedha. It becomes background noise, like all such Imperial chatter. There’s no music in it, there’s barely rhythm. It’s like a metronome.

Against this keeping of time, Chirrut is aware that the city is changing like the hands of a clock, telling him the time. On his right, facing out toward the street, the air is warmer, he can feel the painting sun against his cheek, the rays touching and warming his robe. It ties to a memory, hauling it up out of the depths like an anchor comes up from the water.

Jedha has always been struggling - at least as long as Chirrut has been alive. He remembers the old struggle as a worthy one. The fight to keep warm, to have water, to survive the streets. Holy, certainly; _busy_ always. Now it struggles like a bug under the thumb, waiting to be set free or to die. Chirrut is not holding his breath for freedom.

The memory of sitting in the high court of the Temple of Whills eases over him like the faint warmth of the sun’s rays. He remembers Baze’s heavy step in the echoing room, coming to bring Chirrut out of his thoughts and into the world again. It was the first time Chirrut was sure he _knew_ what Baze was going to tell him. 

The Force felt like standing on sand at the beach that day, waves pulling and eroding it out from under his feet. It was like sinking slowly to listen to it. At any moment now, he could pull free, but there would come an instant when he couldn’t, not without help - and then, after a time, when it was no longer possible at all.

He’d delayed the news with the Force washing over him until it pulled his body like a riptide, bending over practically backwards to hook his fingers under the collar of Baze’s shirt, pulling him down. Baze was so steady it was hard to take him off balance, but Chirrut understood his points of leverage.

Their mouths came together awkwardly, Baze’s upside-down to his own, first all teeth and crushed lips, and then they had it. He found his balance in steadying Chirrut with his broad, rough hands on the sides of his face, both of them arched and bent uncomfortably. It was just a taste of the future.

Baze’s teeth were sharp. He had both his sets of eye-teeth, and Chirrut licked against them until he fully understood their shape, and contained within his stable of experiences th rough scratch of Baze’s mustache against his own bare chin. 

Baze had hesitated when they eased apart. It required untangling, straightening back out. 

“Why’d you do that?” he asked.

“You brought news,” Chirrut said.

“You haven’t heard it.”

“I didn’t want you to think this was a response to that.”

A heavy pause. Baze let out a breath like it pained him to do so. 

“You already knew.”

“I am one with the Force.”

“You heard from someone else,” Baze sounds far more convinced of his own explanation.

“No,” Chirrut corrected, getting to his feet. The kiss had bought him less time than he’d hoped for. “I heard how heavy your steps are, and the Force feels full of unrest.” 

“There’s a man from the Empire downstairs,” Baze told him. “Meeting with the head of the order.”

“Why? There are no Jedi here,” Chirrut dusted off his knees, more to strike feeling back into his lower legs than out of a desire to appear clean.

“The Force doesn’t have specifics for you?”

“I didn’t kiss the Force.”

“Maybe you should have,” Baze said. “We could use its favor.”

“Do I have your favor at least?” Chirrut reached for his staff, where he’d left it leaning on the wall. It eases against his palm as if eager to be there, comfortable against the heel of his hand and strong under the curl of his fingers.

“Will you kiss me again if I say no?” Baze asked.

“It was that terrible? Remember, I know when you’re lying.”

Baze hesitated. For a moment, they were both uncertain. “No, it was good. I’ve been waiting for you to do it.”

“I’ve been waiting _to_ do it,” Chirrut admitted. “You could have made the first move.”

“That’s always been your job.”

It still is, Chirrut knows. He has the patience to wait for the moment that won’t allow them to wait anymore. Then, they move. 

There are only a few credits in his bowl today - they are fewer and further between as the Empire strips the temple empty. They do not pay the miners, and the minds stay out of the city. He is not here for the income of credits, but information.

“Are we finished for today?” Baze asks, as the credits rattle in the bowl.

“I’m glad we don’t actually have to eat with only this,” Chirrut says, scooping the meager handful of coins out of the clay bowl.

“The city got less generous when the Empire stopped pretending to pay for what they were stealing,” Baze observes.

“Thank Saw Gerrera for that,” Chirrut answers, diving into the flow of the bustling crowd and hitting the current of bodies perfectly - he enjoys when he gets it just-so and leaves Baze cursing and jostling through the crowd behind him.

The heavy, visceral rack of his canon loading a round clears his way; the crowd scatters away from him like nervous fish and he joins Chirrut again. Baze falls into step beside him, one stride slightly longer than the other in a way that suggests he’s slung the gun over his shoulder. 

“That’s the thanks I have for Saw and his Rebellion,” Baze mutters.

Chirrut turns down an alley at twenty five paces, and when his sliding staff hits the wall at the end he turns left, pushing open a door with a false but impressive padlock and they become ghosts beneath the holy city, then. 

It’s a trait of ancient places to dig deep, to build up in layers. Jedha has been inhabited beyond anyone’s ability to remember. The Temple of the Whills - in comparison - is new.

Below the city are the old mazes. Tunnels against siege and thieves runs, water drains for the monsoon, all running together. It smells like cold stone, and the air pushes icy fingers against Chirrut’s skin.

“More slowly,” Baze calls behind him.

Chirrut pauses, listening to the shuffle; clattering weaponry against plasteel armor. The squeak of a hinge - the lantern. Rough, dry scratch and smoke-burnt smell; a match.

He’d forgotten.

“Don’t you remember the way by now?” Chirrut asks.

“We may not be the only ones on this path. I can walk in darkness, but I can’t shoot in it,” Baze says, his tone a little distant as he puts the matches away. “If you’d like to walk behind me for once...”

“You would have to walk faster,” Chirrut says.

When they stop, they are far below the temple. Hollow noises are everywhere around them. This is where they live since abandoning the surface. The Force still lives here, too. It’s quiet, muffled under the sounds of agony from above, churned up like water over stones and chattering.

“Turn on the light,” Baze growls. “The lantern’s about to go out.”

“Why would I do that?” 

“Because you have a friend who is tired of barking his shins on your furniture,” Baze answered.

Chirrut follows the cold, thin tail of the electrical cord to the generator, reeling it over his hand until he can prime the engine with gas and work the starter. It coughs and growls to life, and Chirrut puts his hand over it, feeling the way it shuddered as it worked.

For a moment, they are both quiet. Chirrut can feel the working pistons inside the machine generating the energy that must flood the chamber with light. It warms quickly under his palm. He can hear, too, the thud of impact when Baze sets down his weapon for the evening. 

“You don’t have to carry that out every day,” Chirrut says, finding the stacked crates and old padding that serves as his bed, sitting down on the edge of it.

“The day I didn’t carry it would become the day I should have,” Baze answered.

“That sounds remarkably like faith.”

“I have a lot of faith in my repeating canon. It’s easier to listen to than dreams.”

So many years as a Guardian of the Whills, and still so unbent. These days, there is a lot in the past that tries to pull him back; out of the current of the living Force and into the history that had led him into the stream. He lays back, pillowing his head on his palms, and considers. This memory too, comes up out of the depths because the line is twined around the bulk of his thoughts, heavy and constricting, and he pulls on it to see where it leads.

It’s something about the tactile sensation of the rattling generator, now only an echo in his fingertips, that reminds Chirrut of his first meeting with Baze, years ago. An injured mercenary with a deep, dangerous rattle in his lungs. 

Jedha was a place of pilgrimage in those days, a hard and lengthy trip through decaying hyperspace lanes and calling out even then to those who followed the Force. With the Jedi vanishing from the galaxy and the Separatists starting to gain traction and tighten their grip, any place that you could touch hope had a powerful draw. At the time, the Guardians of the Whills had mostly acted as protectors against false guides to the holy city. It was easy to find a pilgrim willing to look up at the temple, or an old battle scar on the walls, while someone emptied their pockets.

Other schemes were less benign; the order had uncovered- amidst a rash of false kyber crystal sales as keepsakes and talismans, a group eroding the ancient crystals from the caverns beneath, hollowing them out from the bottom to sell the real thing to far more affluent collectors.

If they had guessed what was really coming, they may have ignored this far more benign export. It would have meant less for the Empire later, an ideal that seems more important every day.

That was when he’d met Baze; a veteran, a mercenary. The clone wars passed and he’d survived it through luck, only to be shot in the back by the smugglers who were paying him to protect them when things went difficult for them in the tunnels.

The Force guided Chirrut to kneel, to put his hand on the body instead of stepping over it, and he could feel the depth of the injury even then, the way breath was rattling wetly in Baze’s lungs.

“Help me up,” Baze had said. “We’ll both get our revenge on those bastards.”

It seemed familiar; _he_ seemed familiar, even then.

“It can’t be much revenge,” Chirrut said. “You don’t look so good.”

“It’s dark,” Baze said. “I look fine in the dark.”

It was a sentiment that Chirrut would come to agree with deeply over the years. He’d helped Baze to his feet, and led him into the holiest part of the temple - where not even the Empire had been allowed, telling himself that if the stranger died, he would not mourn as if he’d lost his truest friend.

He would have.

“Bacta tanks,” Baze coughed. “Some Jedi secret.”

“Now it’s just our secret,” Chirrut corrected. “If you want to heal by the strength of your faith instead...”

He began to drop Baze on the floor. The mercenary gripped onto him more tightly.

“Bacta is far stronger.” 

Over the weeks it took him to heal; to say his rather unorthodox vows to the Guardians of the Whills, he has proven himself false. Baze had a faith and loyalty that was far stronger than most, but he placed it, confusingly, in Chirrut’s hands rather than the Force.

“You’re thinking about trouble,” Baze interrupts his thoughts.

“I’m thinking about you,” Chirrut corrects.

He hears Baze’s quiet step, before he sits on the bed at Chirrut’s side, depressing the mattress and causing the crates to groan. 

“Should I feel an itch between my shoulder blades when you do that?” 

Chirrut laughs, reaching up. Baze’s hand closes around his fingers, rough, strong.

“Do you?” Chirrut asks him. “Or do you just want me to scratch your back?”

Instead, Baze leans back, lays down with his head on Chirrut’s middle, his shaggy and ragged hair under Chirrut’s fingers. It felt old - like a part of him that had given up. Coarse, like the rest of him, but underneath was the vulnerable scalp, warm and human. For a moment, they are quiet together, the sounds of the Imperial miners above and around them. It seems less cold, with that solid weight pressing Chirrut down.

“It can’t last much longer,” Chirrut says.

Baze groans, protesting being drawn back into anything resembling a riddle. “Nothing lasts forever. Maybe tomorrow, we’ll get that six hundred credit reward for the pilot. I could pay my own bounty.”

The Force no longer comes to him in the quiet, Chirrut realizes then. It has come to occupy the other places in his life; calling him up, out, into the heat and air and light, drawing them all to where the danger was. It could not drown out the explosions or dampen blaster-fire, but that counterpoint was calling him there.

“I don’t think there’s going to be any reward,” Chirrut says, listening to the echoes, feeling the echoes in his memory. The Force no longer feels like the soothing waves of water, but like looking down over a cliff and feeling the air currents change until the breeze on your cheeks carried the scent of the thorns and flowers at the bottom. Maybe, what they’d had already was the reward for what they were being called to do.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta reader & encourager, MayGlenn!


End file.
